Addiction: Sex What To Say: Did you know one in thirty people carry a sexually transmitted disease? What Not To Say: That girl over there is eye-f*cking the sh*t out of you Michael Douglas once cited sex addiction was to blame for his many transgressions during his divorce from his first wife in the nineties. At the time there was collective shrug of the shoulders from men everywhere which seemed to say who isnt Mike??. The result was a rather costly divorce settlement. That same affliction is portrayed in Steve McQueens film Shame and shows its definitely no laughing matter. The film follows Brandon, a seemingly successful advertising executive living in New York, who has carefully cultivated a life for himself that allows him to indulge his growing addiction while struggling to deal with his inability to connect to anyone. Brandon is brought vividly to life by Michael Fassbender who gives an unflinching performance which brilliantly conveys the compulsion and emptiness of Brandon and the reality of being unable to connect emotionally with anyone. Fassbender acutely conveys the mania of sex addiction as all-encompassing and worse than cravings for even the hardest drug in a performance that deservedly won him the Volpi Cup Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival. Rather shamefully (zing) the Academy ignored this searing, adult performance, instead choosing to nominate favourite sons George Clooney and Brad Pitt, for The Descendants and Moneyball respectively, with Jean Dujardin winning for The Artist, despite Fassbenders performance showing greater depth and range. Its just a shame (zap) for Michael Douglas this film wasn't made twenty years earlierit could have saved him a fortune.
